Remember the only changeable faceplates of the Nokia 3310? Well Nokia has not abandoned its customizable case heritage. As part of a 3D-printing Development Kit, Nokia has published files that let customers design and print their own cases for the Nokia Lumia 820. The company even provides guidance on what materials may work best.

Sources tell Reuters that Sharp's iPad screen production line at its Kameyama plant in Japan has been cut to minimum, after a gradual slowdown began at the end of 2012. How much of the slowdown is due to seasonal changes in demand or consumers opting for the smaller iPad mini over the Retina model, it's not entirely clear. And not surprisingly, spokespeople for both Apple and Sharp aren't commenting.

According to Bloomberg, there's trouble in Sprint's acquisition of Clearwire. Clearwire shareholders want Sprint to to raise its bid after Dish made its own offer. Sprint already owns over 50% of Clearwire and offered $2.97 per share for the remainder. Dish offered $3.30 per share. Sources say that Clearwire investor Taran Asset Management will file a complaint with the FCC saying Clearwire is worth more than Sprint's current bid.

Have users fled Instagram after the controversy over their new terms of service? Instagram says no. The company reports 90 million people use Instagram on a monthly basis and the number is up 10 percent since December. A third-party company called AppData had reported declines in active DAILY users-- a number more likely to fluctuate than the MONTHLY number Instagram is using.

Publisher Hearst will now make the entire catalog of its magazines on iOS available to subscribers before the magazines come out in print. How many days in advance will vary by title. Both existing subscribers and new subscribers will benefit front he new feature, which is so far, exclusive to iOS's newsstand.

Intel began production of its future-gen code-named Haswell microprocessors in the fourth quarter of 2012. The new chips, made using 22nm process technology, promise to revolutionize notebooks and ultrabooks with increased performance, voice recognition, gesture controls, touch screens, and lower power consumption, including "all-day" battery life, which translates to about 9 hours.

Judge Lucy Koh issued an order for Tim Cook to give a deposition in an Antitrust case. For those of you whose heads are spinning with litigation - this is the case that involves Apple, Google, Intel, Pixar, Adobe, and Lucasfilm as defendants and says the companies agreed to not poach workers from each other. Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will also be deposed.

Google just bought 2.4 acres in London's King's Cross Area for the sum of £1 billion. Google will build a seven and 11 story complex on the land and the project is expected to be completed in 2016. The company already has two offices in London.

Sony has agreed to sell its New York headquarters building to a consortium led by The Chetrit Group for $1.1 billion potentially avoiding a negative Q3 earnings report. According to Reuters, Sony may make a similar move in Tokyo, which could get the company another $1.14 billion to balance its budget.

Did you know that Facebook stores all your photos on traditional hard disks? Well, now that the company is hosting billions of photos, hard drives make less and less sense. Those older photos aren’t accessed that often, and if they remain on hard drives, they still draw large amounts of power. So, do they move to flash memory? Facebook's VP of infrastructure engineering Jay Parikh says he wants a new version that's specifically designed for data that’s accessed only occasionally. he tells wired “We want something with a low write-endurance. We want to get to something with a much, much lower unit cost per gigabyte.”

- sharp reportedly cutting orders for iPad to make way for mini demand, running at minimum at plant in Japan- Based on a survey of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, Google's Nexus 7 tablet had 44.4% of the market versus the iPad's 40.1%, according to Nikkei, Japan's largest business daily. The survey was done by market research firm BCN in December.- nexus 7 about $100 less than ipad mini in japan- survey did note, however, that there was a shortage of the iPad Mini at stores and that this may have contributed to Apple's market share decline.

- Macquarie Research has estimated that iPad shipments will tumble nearly 40% in the current quarter to about 8M from about 13M in the 4th quarter, although Apple's total tablet shipments will show a much smaller decrease due to strong iPad mini sales.- Tablet sales in Japan were 3.6M units in 2012 and this is expected to swell to 4.9M in 2013, according to figures from IDC Japan that Nikkei cited.

- MMTC Broadband and Social Justice Summit panel of four former FCC Chairs-NCTA President Michael Powell said that while a lot of people had tried to label the cable industry's interest in the issue as about congestion management. "That's wrong," he said. "Our principal purpose is how to fairly monetize a high fixed cost."- "If you want to go to the Denny's buffet and fill up your bowl, you are going to pay more than the person who chooses broccoli spears."- Also emphasized accessibility for those not on the Web and discipline for Web designers.- So one lie down, only a few stretched truths to go- Fairness still implies someone's using more of the bucket of bits. Why are there no super cheap plans for light users?- High fixed cost? Sort of….Although quarterly earnings for ISPs don't seem to suffer- Karl Bode at dslreports writes: "What the industry's really doing is using the benefit of uncompetitive markets to price gouge customers"

- U.S. Representative Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, released a discussion draft of the Application Privacy, Protection, and Security Act on Wednesday. (APPS act)

- The Act would require a mobile application to provide the user with the notice of the T&C and obtain consent of the user before collecting personal data of the user

The Notice:- must include the categories of personal data to be collected, the categories of purposes for which the personal data will be used, as well as the categories of third parties with which the personal data will be shared.

Withdrawal of Consent:- Developer of the app must provide the user with the ability to notify the developer that the user will stop using the app- user can request the developer stop collection- user can ask the developer to delete any personal data collected OR the app to refrain from sharing data (option is that of the user)

Q: What do you think of this APPS act? Does it do enough? Too much? Does this need to be legislated?

- The proposal, not yet formally introduced as legislation, would also allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to enforce app privacy rules

- "we always have these debates: We have all this money, we have all these people, why aren’t we doing more stuff? You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that’s working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying."

Q: Why aren't more companies trying more crazy things?

- On Facebook:Page called it strong, "But they’re also doing a really bad job on their products." However, Page thinks there's room for more than one company in the space

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Google tops the Fortune 100 best companies to work for, Apple doesn't even place

- Fortune released top 100 of best companies to work for in US- variety of industries. Google at #1 but without any data.- zappos at #31 with -57.3% job growth? also has 61% female employees- fedex has most employees of list, at #98

Google Vice President of Security Eric Grosse and Engineer Mayank Upadhyay wrote a paper appearing in IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine later this month- “Along with many in the industry, we feel passwords and simple bearer tokens such as cookies are no longer sufficient to keep users safe,”1. Modified YubiKey logs you into Google (modded Chrome)- authenticate one device (yubikey, smartphone) use like a car key2. Tap to log-in with phone or special smartcard-embedded ringStill need passwords for screen unlock. Only need complex passwords when making significant changes- Making protocol independent of Google. Only modded browser needed. Cannot track users.

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We will narrow this down to one story, put your initials next to the story you like best

I worked for a health dept. for many years and love the idea of putting restaurant inspection scores on Yelp listings. Maybe they (Yelp) could put a "I feel lucky" button on the application that would list restaurants in your area with bad scores.

I enjoy listening to TNT. Please keep the great shows coming.

Terry from Texas

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Hi TNT crew,

There are a couple of advantages that you missed about schools getting cheap chrome books, Google can also benefit by having the students and teachers introduced to the Chrome OS and all the services that go along with that such as Google drive and Google plus. Having the kids and teachers adopting the Chrome OS will help get more users. students that cant afford laptops or iPads will be able to look at Chrome Books as an alternative and will be able to do their schoolwork outside of class.

This is also a benefit for the schools because having a cloud driven device will make it easier for students and teachers to communicate and exchange homework or other documents. If a kid was home sick he could easily turn in his homework and get notes from classmates for the day he missed. Students will also be able to coordinate group projects much easier. It will also help eliminate some of the bullying that Sarah said might happen with bring your own devices.

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